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PALMETTO PICTURES 



Phoebea somnia. 

Gray 




:<Kn- ^^" 



NEW-YORK : 



WALTER LOW, 823 BROAD.WAY 

^ 186 3. 






Entered, according to Act' of Congress, In the year 1863, 

B T WALTER LOW, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Coart for the Southern District oi 
New York 



J. H. ToBiTT, Printer, l Franklin-square. N Y 



MY CLASS 

'57, 



AT YALE 



This Year Assembling:. 



What shall I do ? I cannot find a book ; 

My only literature a " muster-roll." 

I cannot conjure ap, ever so droll, 
An Ariel in Beaufort, or my crook, 
No Prospero's, or else the Isle's forsook 
By all but Calibans, as black as coal. 
What shall I do ? what shall I do ?— alone, 

For all my freedom but the more confined, 
O. how myself unto myself atone, 

How make myself unto myself resigned ? 

By homoeopathic treatment of the mind ? 
I have it. Want a book ? I'll write mine own. 
Ad nauseam, to s^row content with none. 



'' It was a place 
Clios'n by the Sovran Planter." 

Paradise Lost. 



Beautiful Land, where the bountiful sun 

Blesses the bond of savannah and sea, 
Neither so lovely till blended in one 

Each to the other shall complement be, 
Magical dews that the tropical day 

Kisses to rapturous odor and hue, 
Myrtle and laurel and orange and bay, 

Purple and emerald, golden and blue. 



Yonder indigenous endogens wave 

Banner-like blades on a mystical bole, 
And, with a vigor perennial, brave 

Boreal blasts from the alien pole. 
Over the plaited palmettos, abroad 

Brawned like Briareus, century-old, 
Grimly magnificent evergreen god 

Eealm of the greenwood the live-oak doth 
hold. 



12 



Tempests the thunderous foliage toss. 

Locks of the Deity wizard and hoar, 
Awfully sighs the oracular moss, 

Art thou incarnate Do dona of yore ? 
Dead generations rejoiced at thy birth, 

Peoples have flourished to power with thee, 
Cities have leaped from thy generous girth. 

Art of the shore and the ark of the sea. 



O these soft Isles of the summery sea I 

Angels their daintiest prisms composing, 
Turn the kaleidoscope watching with, glee. 

Every moment new glories disclosing. 
Land of the Beautiful, Bountiful Land ! 

Sweet is the blossom, but sweeter the boon. 
Flowers are bright and tlieir odors are bland. 

O but the fruits of the tropical noon ! 



And the delirious chorusses — hush ! 

Mockingbird, whippoorwill, nonpareil, 
Nightingale, killdeer, and passionate thrush, 

fringed by the petrel's tempestuous peal ? 



13 



Tribes of tlie sea, how ye cherish these shores. 
Meeting in wild multitudinous play, 

Muscles rejoice in the succulent pores, 
Crabs and soft shrimps, Epicurean prey. 



Wliat do the elves of the sun and the sea, 

Cunningly comb from the glistening sands? 
Is it the fleece of a sorcery 

Wierder than wildered the Argonaut bands ? 
Magical mesh, to entangle a world — 

Commerce, religion, philosophy, art. 
Liberty, peace, from tlieir pedestal hurled — 

Cotton^ the tyrant of manor and mart. 



Omuious plant ! thou shalt never again, 

Ghost of the tears and the blood of the slave, 
Phantom of knout- welted corpses of men, 

Stalk like a ghole, with the gust of the grave. 
For there's a judgment, wherever hath trod 

Blistering foot of the bondman, and earth 
Gapes to develope the vengeance of God, 

Ruin and rapine, and ravage and dearth, 

2 



14 



This is the Land of divinest Delight, 
Riches of rapture in every ray, 

Gold of tlie morning and amber of night — 
Passionate peace, nought to take it away. 

This is the Land, th?-t the Serpent of Sin 
Seeks to begnile of a generous God, 

This is the Land that His servants shall win- 
Liberty's Eden from Slavery's rod. 



My Photographic Album, where I place 
At leisure and at random, scene or face, 
Without connexion ; you may look it through 
Whenever you have nothing, else to do. 

Faithful at least, and independent, free 
From artist, vanity or flattery. 
It is no sketch-book, therefore claims no skill. 
A lens, a liquid, paper, light at will 
Leave Nature's chemic forces, unconstrained 
To follow her own fancy, self-contained. 
So you may find — your microscopic eyes — 
More than my witless camera descries. 
For such the virtue of a kind of art 
That should infinitesimals impart, j 
And a8 astronomers will sometimes scan 
By photograph the moon, and find its '' man," 
So here these single and these double " stars," 
To your research may grow problems of Mars, 



16 



From wlience to solve a general ellipse — 
And understand these phases of eclipse, 
Eclipse of Slavery^ the most profound 
That ever gloomed upon the planet^s round. 
Some stars are fixed, and some are meteors — 
But brazen glittering of straj^s and spurs : 
And one star — ^proud be Mitchel's epitaph — 
Faintly reflected in this photograph, 
Has been translated to the upper stars 
Above the ecliptic of the earth and Mars. 

So while I furnish you a face, or tree, 
Or flower, your Cuvier siigacity 
Will join the parts, to Cuvier's desire, 
A " bird's eye view/' good as the bird entire. 

Forsooth my camera m Dixie's land 
Ought not to lack collodion at hand. 
If but the Muse's ether could sublime 
A Staple so combnstive in this clime, 
However, should you chance upon a blur, 
Whatever fault shall anywhere occur. 
This " negative" excuse the error hath — 
Charge " positive " mistakes upon the bath ; 
For by manipulation in the field, 
A clear result is diflicult to yield — 
And please remember that photography 
Herself confesses such a " process " — " d7yJ^ 



n 



A Major-General, as good as brave, 
Whose soldiers style him lovingly " black Dave," 
An old Castiliaii Don, of sturdy frame, 
Beneath whose shaggy eyebrows, like a flame, 
Twin lustres glisten, with a living light — 
A Double Star and beacon for tlie right. 
That did not tamely tarry to reflect 
The tardy light of Congress, to protect 
The withering leaf of stricken liberty, 
But threw away the sheath of slavery. 
And waved that sword his comrades feared to 

draw 
For the divine above the human law. 
Tes, Hunter's star gleams with the light of hea- 
ven, 
His brand tipt ^vitli vengeant thunder-levin 
To become Excalibur, whereby 
Alone the ISTation will its fate defy. 
The truth, the truth, the truth alone is great 
To break or build, destroy or save a state, 



18 



And who strikes for the right against tlie wrong. 

Strikes ever even for himself as strono^i 

For let this be the motto of the wise, 

My own riglits and my neighbor's sympathize. 

By granting whose forever guard my own — 

EquaUty is Justice' corner-stone. 

So Hunter stands the Hero of the fight, 

AikI universal- Freedom's champion-knight. 

There is a courage mightier than liis 
Who whistles reckless of the bullet's whiz, 
And men storm forts, without the fortitude 
To brave the canon of a critic's mood, 
Saltpetre palling hss than prejudice, 
And on dit daunting more than death or Dis. 
Xovf note that scar, and mark a gallant sign 
Flow one brow blenched not in the battle line, 
When Bull Eun's bloody banners blushed the 

shame 
That choked the patriot for otliers' blame. 
Yet bolder still upon a later day, 
The sturdy Stand ish uf a moral t'ray, 
Alone against the legions of the league 
Of Slavery's idolatrous intrigue. 
As erst the Hebrew David, when the king 
Himself stood quaking, pebble in a sling 



19 



He linrled against the blusterer of Gatli, 
And laid him reeking in his own red path. 
Who knows but on tliis other David yet 
God's and the natioiTs honor shall be set, 
Becanse bold only for the truth's own sake, 
AVhile others shrank, he dared the charm to 

break, 
And not by wooing but defying, won — 
A triumph that no other has outdone, 
Speaking a word that like an angePs broke 
The s])ell of Satan and tlie b'>n'lnian's yoke. 
His head upon liis shoulders, like the rock 
At Stonehenge, equipoised, shakes to the shock 
Of energy, not age ; and there's a tone 
Of smothered tempest in the lisping stone, 
lleserved of mien, yet cun-teous and kind, 
Read in his face the features of his mind ; 
Composed as confident of m.aster-skill 
To wield war's bristling dragon-teeth at will, 
And conscious of authority as proud 
As auglit to which Satrapic empires bowed ; 
As mild and modest-m:innered as a maid, 
This lion in re}^(.se, so still and staid. 
Yet knows his mere "request" is a command 
That wo to auv that shall dare withstand. 



20 



Not more relentlessly the vine-clad rock 
Scatters the billow's too presumptuous shock, 
And rolls it startled hack upon the tide, 
llian he rebukes neglect and vicious pride. 

A just God-fearing man, on each Lord's day 
The simple-hearted soldier goes to pray. 
How poor soe'er the altar, plain the priest. 
The duty of the act but thus increased, 
And every night before he shuts his eyes 
He cons that volume fools alone despise. 

So stands the Hero at the fatal gate 
AVhence leaps the yelling leash of rebel hate- 
Hell-hounds of Slavery — back into whose 

womb 
This hunter's Hunter smites the doo^s to doom. 
And when at last the wounded peace is won 
Whose breath will clear this battle-clouded 

sun, 
A star, whose lustre the dispelling day 
Kight disenchanting shall not daze aw\ay, 
A Nation's love shall astrolate his name 
Who helped to blot away his Country's shame. 



21 



ir. 



And next adorned with such a wealth of lace 

As must confound a less heroic face, 

As bluff a brow and w^ell a balanced head 

As ever an}^ ocean prince bestead, 

The very elements revere his eye 

Of deep-withdrawn detiant mystery, 

And over covert like a thunder-fringe, 

Dark beetlino- storm-rift with a silver tinge. 

It is a dauntless, tempest daring front. 

Our ISTavy's gl^rj^, Admikal Dupont. 

His noble soul too throbs responsively 
To truth and universal liberty. 
Though thoughtlessly at first lie let the sin 
Of that dark age, now past forever, spin 
Its web about him — worship of a crime 
That had at least the guarantee of Time ; 
Yet when at last his faithful eye beheld 
The blackness of the darkness that had spelled 
The cotton isles, as never having dreamed 
The very worst could be so unredeemed. 



23 

Sliocked and agliast at such a loathly sight, 

The horror of a Moloch turned to light, 

He vows himself to the divhie crusade, 

And tlienceforth 'gainst the ld(d drew his blade. 

Onr [Ration's Nelson, noble his reward, 
Wliose guns " waltzed down " the " Twins of 

Beauregard," 
And built yon cordon round the rebel coast 
With white-winged frigates like a famine-ghost. 
No mightier marine upon the wave — 
Each deft to carve a Merrimac a grave. 
And which a storm-king could alone subdue — 
JVIontauk, Weehawken — let their fame renew — 
Patapsco, Catskill, and Nantucket bold — 
AVith -sveird Passaic and Nahant, all told. 
Nay, let the luckless Keokuk complete. 
With Ironsides, the most tremendous fleet 
That ever leaped mailed chrysalids of war. 
And over all Dupont their Monitor ! 
I saw^ them brave the veryj%nvs of hell. 
That time Cerberian Sumter's thunder fell, 
When nothing but a mail of heart sublime. 
Tempered by heat of a heroic time. 
Could brook those horrible doom-fangs of steel, 
Whose very shriek made the rent senses reel. 



23 



O Liberty ! preserve thy champion, 

Thank God who has restored thee to the sun. 

Thy years are honors that have nobly earned 

The respite otherwise thou wouldst have spurned, 

And as thou hast been true to the great cause, 

Not lust but liberty, not license, laws, 

A Puritan against tlie Cavalier, 

Plymouth to Beaufort, Ironsides to peer, 

Be thme the fame with Hunter to have stood, 

Thy sole ambition for thy country's good. 



III. 

This earnest face and eager eye declare 
A soul devoted to religions care. 
Saxton his title, Saxon is his stock, 
Son of a pioneer of Plymouth Eock. 
A sober, simple, unassuming man — 
His soiC ambition to assist the plan, 
To smite the despot and set free the slave, 
His country's life and destiny to save ; 
Another star, whose freedom-kindled ray 
Beams a reflection of the coming day ; 



24 



A kniglit of holiness, wlio dares to don 
And wield the Sword of God and Gideon ; 
Elect of mercy's providence divine 
The first ris-ht Governor of Caroline. 



IV 



Kext, for the sake of a variety, 
My servant — though you deem PhotogrsiiAiy 
Burlesqned upon a character so darJc — 
Yet what is human nature but a spark 
Of common nature, be it less or more. 
The lightest literature should not ignore. 
And whose the vision of the Oversoul, 
One face above another to extol ? 
Spirits have no complexion that I know. 
Though Davis and his master tell me so. 
At least poor Dick, though black shall yet be 

white, 
As sure as Heaven's is that purer light 
Wherein I fain would set a camera 
With lens to represent a " higher law.'* 



25 



And there are tales that if tliey could be told 
About these poor black thhigs would make you 

hold 
Your breath in admiration. What ! — ^you smile ? 
But tell me, do you tire to walk a mile, 
Upon a straight path, o'er an open plain ? 
And who, when asked, consents to go the 

'•twain"? 
!N"ow Dick has traversed hundreds, over fen 
And held, evading armed men. 
But you are strong and buoyant with a spring 
Of hope and merry fancy on the wing. 
And you are educated in the lore 
Of life, its value, this and that before, 
And thus are greater than yourself by all 
The wiser past, your future to forestall ; 
While Dick's gaunt body, bowed by fifty years. 
His very childhood but a vale of tears, 
Has never had a hope that was not dark, 
The shadow of your own — God save the mark ! 
And he has never learned from book that spell 
To ope the seven seals of miracle 
In life and nature, and the mystic scroll 
Of wierder mystery in his own soul. 
Yet deatldess youth — is not the hero's so ? — 
Aspiring wiser than itself can know, 



26 



Leads poor Dick's limbs, lean from a lack of food, 

And sapped bj labor's overtasked exude — 

His aged limbs, and if forsootli we count 

His years by trouble, double the amount — 

To seek he knew not what — we always know ? 

Yet thereby are not heroes, are we ? — so, 

Dick rising up flees with his fa-nily. 

From Focotaligo toward the sea ; 

For there has crept a rumor that a host 

Of conquering I^orthmen camp upon the coast, 

Before whose banner, bright with Freedom's 

stars. 
The South are cowering behind their '' bars." 
There shall the shackles of the bondman fall, 
With liberty and peace alike to all ; 
' But all too weak to keep pace with the rest, 
A-lone, a captive back to prison prest 
In Charleston and thence to Secessionville, 
Upon the batteries, against his will 
Employed, he w^aits his opportunity, 
And robs his lords of his own liberty. 

Poor quaint old Dick, submissive as a child. 
To any kind of fortune reconciled, 
So full of such a curious gratitude. 
As if kind words were some strange, J"=i'>ious 
food ; 



27 



Unlearned, yet full of wiser charity 

Than most who ought to be more wise than thee — 

It is as strange as inspiration — why 

So very tender of that bitter tie 

Between thy tyrant master and thyself, 

A master whose sole deity is pelf, 

And with a daily incense of abuse, 

Of lash and lust — hell playing fast and loose — 

A robbed and starved and beaten sufferer. 

Still wilt thou thus to righteous wrath demur — 

*' Poor massa know'd no better ! " — Sun of God ! 

Returning boon for bane to kiss the rod ? 

Unlearned, indeed, yet Heaven only knows 

From whence thy soul has caught each strain 

and close 
Of many a hymn of Christian faith and hope, 
To each of which thy little book will ope, 
Keciting, " Jesus, Lover of my soul," 
As if thy spectacles construed tlie scroll, 
ALhough the volume, if turned upside down. 
Serves thee as well irom bottom as from crown. 
I see thee pore upon thy primer there 
Tense as if time had never touched a hair, 
And tireless toiling under double blur 
Of film and glass to pierce Truth's barrier. 



28 



Devoted Dick, thou art a type to me 
Of all thy race late called to Liberty, 
So tractable, and diligent, and kind, 
True soil of Christianity thy mind. 
Unlike the Indian, so prone to roam. 
Domestic, clinging to the humblest home. 
Surely thou art not vain to elevate 
To independent sovranty of state. 
That, intellective of a will divine. 
Love's prayerful practices must yet refine. 



Y. 



Another Skiagraphy and though they call 
Him by his master's title, Robert Small, 
Rightly by Nature's standard both to rate, 
But one at least is small, the other great. 
And though by stature small, a steady eye 
To ocular illusion gives the lie, 
And with heroic, fate-defying glance. 
Speaks soul superior to circumstance. 



29 



And Eobert, doomed to bondage from the 
womb, 
Finds life a cradle sliapen for a tomb.. 
The very ties of nature but a chain 
Of heart chords, fettered to a tangled brain. 
His spirit curtained, cunning tyranny, 
Lest some light penetrate from liberty, 
A vain and foolish tyrant, not to know 
That fi'eedom rides the very airs that blow, 
The very constitution of the soul 
A magnet instinct to its native pole. 
Sin-blinded confidence, itself beside, 
And overleaping self like suicide, 
Ignoring truth self-study could have taught,- 
Lets worldly wisdom even grow distraught. 
And wanders wanton through absurdity 
Of pride almost too vain for blasphemy, 
A fool, a double fool, a fool intense, 
A fool in God's and in the devil's sense. 
For so the Tempter leads the fool astray, 
Forever bantering but to betray, 
And so it chanced he did this fool deceive. 
The pilot Robert by himself to leave, 
As though the " Planter's " were a. spell so great, 
His wooden namesake ruled its helmsman's fate. 



30 



Through bristling batteries, adown the bay, 
The " Governor's Dispatch Boat " on its way, 
Un watched, unheeded, an accustomed sight, 
Past Johnson, Moultrie, Sumter, speeds its flight. 
Sleep, thunder-throated sentinels of doom ! 
God bids ye sleep, while from a liring tomb 
Your resurrected victim leaps to flight — 
And angels chant hosannas at the sight 1 



YI 



The next is General Seymour's photograph,. 
Chief of Artillery and Chief of Staff 
To Hunter once, and from a noted school, 
That sends some heroes, now and then a fool ; 
One of the gallant band of Anderson, 
Who flamed hot protest from each throbbing gun 
Till stunned to see that spectacle of deai-th 
When Freedom's Stars descended on the heai-th 
Of charity and peace to bhire and start 
A hell of arson in the civil heart. 
O agony ! Yet courage. Liberty, 
Thy God bleeds with thee in Gothsemane> 



31 



And griePs a glory that must jet elate 

A more exceeding and eternal weight. 

Trust Love from wrath forever to wreak praise, 

Whose Father is the Ancient of Days. 

And teach thy champions sweet Liberty ; 

How to win all by losing all for thee. 

Teach the self-seeker, if there be profane 

Enough to take thy holy name in vain, 

The self-denying only and the pure 

Safely can brandish Love's Excalibar, 

More terrible than venom is whose spell 

To such as fail to vvield the weapon well. 



It is the Sabbath, over burning sand& 
Keligiously to cliurcli the contrabands 
Obey the summons of the little bell, 
Whose echoes soft across the marish well, 
And from their tents, beyond the grim " stock- 
ade," 
Lo, a detachment of the " Black Brigade," 



32 



Unarmed, approacli with military tread, 
In double iile, wliite leaders at their head — 
They halt, they open ranks, then, as is due, 
Each enters to his proper place and pew. 
Behold, resplendent in a bright array, 
The sable damsels celebrate the day, 
And rudel}^ typify, with flaunt and hue, 
The goi'geous tastes that tropic mind imbue, 
While here a patriarch with hoary fleece. 
Beams througli his spectacles a soul of peace, 
Unconscinus of the reckless urchin by, 
A hope unknown to grandsire in his eye. 
But O, most notable of all, and sad 
Enough to make the mildest Christian mad 
For vengeance on so horrible a shame 
To human nature and its very name, 
Behold her shrinking 'mong her sisters there, 
A maid with light hlue eyes a?id Saxoii hair ! 
Light on her forehead but a deeper stain 
Instincts without their honor, pride and pain. 
And white is white, and black is honest black. 
But this, O pitiful ! is double lack, 
A staring ini'am}^, a briglit disgrace, 
A livid loathing, where charms but deface. 
Curse on the crime that made again to raar^ 
Can such flout heaven and not flame to ^var ? 



33 



And who will look into this bastard's eye, 
And burn not to wipe out the Social Lie ? 
O " Chivalry," how did thy demon cheat 
Thee to a name that mocks with such defeat ? 
Doubtless the " soul of honor" shames its hearth 
With the most damned corruption of the earth ; 
Doubtless it dignifies a wife to be 
One leman legalized to lechery ; 
Doubtless it must '■' ennoble" Sons to claim 
Their brother's sweat, and wreak their sister's 

shame. 
O yes, accursed liar, it is well 
To smile like heaven, but to smell of hell I 
And talk of Freedom, miscreant, belie 
The blessed word for which the martyrs die. 
Your " liberty" means license — " let alone " 
To mock your father's grief, your grandsire's 

groan. 
But there's a Nemesis that never sleeps, 
A wind it sows, but like a tempest reaps. 
And so it fell, that on this Sabbath day 
Where slaves once pined, now freemen turn to 

pray. 
And as the hymn of gratitude ascends, 
No knee but only to its Maker bends. 
Nor longer worship of the cotton boll 



34 



Revels the fetish of the fettered soul. 

AbiMio, thou faithful servant of the flock, 
Thy Savior will not for th}^ color mock. 
For though we smile, Grod stoops to hear thee 

pray 
To "Alpha, Mena, and obigena," 
Thy spirit right, what if thj speech be not? 
Pure piety need not be polyglot. 
And there's a language in. thy look and tone 
That needs no lexicon but love alone. 
Yes, tell us of the " brazen serpent's" spell, 
Late from the wilderness thou teachest well. 
VV^hcit healed the venom of the stinging thong? 
O hark Gethsemane's immortal song! 
And nov/ when Freedom lifts her blessed sign, 
O tell us of her promises divine ; 
How often in thine agonizing prayer 
Was felt her spirit with th^^ spirit there, 
And a bright hoj)e — at last so sweetly blest! 
And thus forever faith shall end in rest! 
God grant whoever is in danger yet. 
His eyes upon the " brazen serpent" set, 
God grant religion and sweet liberty 
Be " lifted up," and all men to it flee. 

Yes, Abram Murcheson, by will left free 
For having nursed his master faithfully, 



35 



The widow and her brother burn the proof. 
And sell their " chattel " to a stranger's roof, 
Where, bruised too bitterly, lie bursts his chain. 
Flees from Savannah to its foes amain, 
And finds delight lie never knew before, 
Home, hope, and freedom on a foreign shore. 



YIII 



The Black Brigade forestalls the photograph 
Of a young Colonel U])on Hunter's staff — | 
The rest need not be shown — -it' sucli their kind. 
One representative enough to find — 
Who first assisted his experiment 
So promising at last — to which intent 
The General, wlien questioned, gave response 
In this provoking, smiling nonchalance : 

" 'Tis not a regiment of fugitives 
About which Mi*. Wickliffe's mind misgives, 
But men, from whom their masters fied away, 
Wlien loyal vengeance thundered up the bay, 
And thus of course entitled to pursue 
And to recover but their honest due. 



36 



Whom having been empowered here to hire 
With any sort of tools tliat I desire, 
And having found them useful with the spade, 
I've tlionght to try the military trade ; 
And find them very well adapted too, 
Indeed white soldiers could not better do. 
Besides, they're acclimated, and they know 
Each cunning by-path by which rebels go. 
In fact [ am so fully satisfied 
With the experiment that I have tried, 
I trust to soon present the Government 
Withj^^y times my first Black Regiment." 

And so each day beneath the burning sun 
Camp Drayton saw the Colonel's duty done, 
Till grateful history at last divines 
A lojal regiinent of Carolines. 

A gentle son of gentlemanly sire. 
This youthful Colonel is one to admire. 
And well illustrates the unnatural 
Occasion that such gentleness could call 
From peace, and the pursuits of civil life, 
To active part upon the stage of strife. 
And honor him for this among the van, 
The soldier never sinks the gentleman. 
Too many severed from their social ties, 
Don uniforms like masquerade disguise 



oi 

To ape Bombastes, as if battle sends 
Its heroes first to practice on their friends. 
I saw him once, when shattered by a fall, 
A comrade rode an ambulance to call. 
Whereat, though racked with agony intense, 
Yet, conscious of his gentlemanly sense, 
Forcing apart his pain -closed lips he spake, 
More mindful of politeness than his ache. — 
And such the nature of true courtesy. 
Than which I know no fairer sight to see, 
For 'tis a thing oi' spirit, not of sense, 
And sways the world to divine iniiuence. 
Above all else it scorns to tell a lie. 
And courtier, insulting mockery, 
"With sycophantic, sibillating grace. 
About the coveted purlieus of place. 
It shuns instinctive, with a simpler suit, 
As man to man alone accepts salute ; 
And as a man, the lowliest no less. 
Entitled to a complaisant address, 
In answer to this talismaiiic spell. 
Becomes himself a gentleman as well. 
"War, an inversion of the civil state, 
Warps kindly custom to a code of hate ; 
And grading love degrades it, saps its leaven- 
Bank's offence too often " smells to heaven.'' 



38 



And yet wherefore must a " slioiilder-strap " 

So tort the nature of a simple chap, 

That straightway in his social intercourse 

He must repeat the manners of his horse, 

And whinuey, caper, caracole and kick 

With airs enou;^!! to make a jockey sick ? 

War lias no virtue if it do not start 

A. better circulation of the heart, 

Phlebotomize conceit and flay the fool. 

And put first principles again to school. 

When crime and vanity are driveu hence. 

The code of war must yield to common sense. 

And " man and brother," grown a settled phrase. 

Shall banish military popinjays. 

For war, unnatural, disorders life, 

Electrifies all elements to strife, 

Unsettles thought, excites destructiveness. 

Good never, though it be the evil less, 

God haste the time wlien gallowserqft shall cease. 

With all insignia of sin-disease, 

And souls of gentle insthict nn molest 

May radiate upon a spliere of rest. 

And yet, however we shall war lament- — 
The sad necessity wlierefor 'tis sent — 
Eight where it seems to end again begun, 
Heaven breeds honey in the skeleton. 



39 



For what a wealtli of nobleness is found 
When Hate's artesian auger bores the ground 
To tlie mysterious teeming arteries, 
Whose fountains are the everlasting seas ! 
Through drouth and dearth of long prosperity 
The very continents grown parched and dry, 
And ah, tlie summits that are sun-kist most 
The first to prove their springs of passion lost. 
And faith and fortitude in last despair, 
Tlieir hope exhaling in tlie burning air — 
Smite with thy steel, O Prophet of the Time ! 
The world's foundation to its deep sublime. 
And prove that evermore beneath the crust 
The will of God's a never-failing trust ! 
For well was heroism said to be 
Akin to heavenly philanthropy.* 
Tlie trump of Mars, a i-esurrective spell. 
Evokes the worldling from his foetid cell, 
And noisome silk-worms, from the pents of pelf, 
Like chrysalises from cocoons of self. 
Instinct returns into the hearts of men. 
And slighted truth into regard again. 
The lying court no longer cheat and rail, 
For Arthur's up and hunts the Holy Grail! 

♦ Shaftesbury. 



40 



O let the youth into whose hands shall fall 
The State their sires are bleeding to install, 
Remember to avoid the errors rife 
That wrecked our quiet and betrayed to strife ; 
Nov longer let the principled and just 
Shirk Freedom's duties and the Public Trust. 
For can they rightly judge the ballot-box 
Whose " fraud " but their own recreancy mocks, 
Who ought at least have leavened with their 

own, 
Truth and devoted spirit to atone ? 
For " universal franchise " needs to be, 
Indeed must U7iiversal to hef^'ee / 
And leave the ballot to the " baser sort," 
Of course its liberty will prove abort, 
For " primary elections rule the state " — 
Tlien go yourself — chicanery checkmate ! 
The good forever is the stronger part 
If but its friends will take it unto heart, 
And note the lesson of the fabled frog 
Who fretted self control into a log. 
The " Genius of Humanity " is best, 
And Heavenward " Destiny " is " manifest." 

But when the tumult of the war is done. 
And Freedom's blood with fresher pulse shall 
run, 



41 



Homesick for peace society si i all start 

A nobler energy of mind and heart. 

Lo spirits melted in the furnace blast 

Shall straightway into better moulds be cast, 

The arts of war shall yield to arts of peace, 

And all reviving hail a glad release ; 

The Church shall brush the cobwebs from the 

pyx, 

The State shall jjurify its politics, 

Truth shall return with a distincter gleam, 

The dream millennium seem less a dream. 

The Nation, taught by suffering to know 

Itself, true charity receive and show ; 

And triends of Freedom throughout all the earth, 

Shall cry all hail to the Kew Era's birth, 

When Slavery, the body of a death, 

Xo more shall sap a generous nation's breath ; 

Again that spectacle, with lustre new. 

To startle time, with its example true. 

Of how a State can work its joints to ply 

All offices in perfect sympathy. 

The general and local interest 

In perfect complement together blest, 

A series of concurrent sovereignty. 

Town, County, State, Briarean Unity, 

Expanding wide a multiple of power, 



42 



With love-tipt fingers, brightest boon to shower 
On all alike, white, black, and shades between — 
The mystic stone is found, the Golden Mean ! 

Battles are not the crises that divine — 
Defeat nor triumph — the dividing line. 
Where ought the problems of the typic strife 
Between the Periwig and Roundhead rife, 
Be solved if not upon the very spot 
Where first the Cavalier transfers his lot 
Of oligarchic feudal polity ; 
Ofi*shoot of effete aristocracy 
Pitted against the seed of Plymouth Rock, 
The Code of love against the Code of Locke, 
Freedom and Slavery in one last embrace, 
And fatal death-grip gasping face to face? 

Where ought we to expect to find the slave 
First resurrected from his living grave, 
And taught to arm himself in self-defence, 
And educated to the novel sense 
Of liberty to know his ecpial right, 
Thouo'h blackest black with whitest of the white 
But where the grateful friend of freedom saw 
The bondman's right just claimed by "Martial 

law"— 
That match that lighted the Columbiad, 
A '' proclamation " for its cannon -wad — 



43 



Next heard that watchword spoken from the heart 
Of contest — " arm the blacks"— an echo start 
Quick at whose sound, the countr}^ leaps to aid. 
Brigade succeeding everywhere brigade. 
ISTay, still the negro's right to equal place 
Obstructed as of an inferior race, 
Thwarted and cheated in his humblest claims, 
In vain to talk to him of higher aims, 
For thirty days, lo here, the armed patrol 
\¥ith drums parade a culprit with tliis scroll — 
Eead. — " This man has been mean enough to 

steal ^ 

A negro's pittance" — notable appeal I 
Down prejudice, and patriot for shame ! 
Is freedom Justice or an empty name? 
Again — a ship from Ancient Augustine, 
With parasitic spitfires, full of spleen. 
Distilled from army rations, venomed drones. 
You give them bread, get serpents, fislies stones. 
'^ Send them across the lines " and cut them off — 
What feed at our expense at whom they scoff! 
The rotten reeking animalculae 
And vermin ed vinegar of Slavery ! 
Yes, let the President, with smooth salaam, 
Present the South its own Yallandigham, 
The " Copperhead " to mate the "rattle snake," 



44 



Together destined for tlie burning lake. 
Tlie ghastly prodigies of double dearth 
Wreathing the camp and writliing on the 

hearth — 
Scotch them and out upon the maudlin tear 
W-oiild di-ip upon a double Traitor^s Mer ! 
God grant it be impossible this strife 
Can cease till Slavery yields its life. 
Better the springs run crimson to the sea 
Draining each drop from every artery 
Of treason, better pnrse and pulse be sapped, 
Than Inst in love be any^lon^^^er lapt. 
Down witli the *' Peace Partj^" — let no truce be 
To truculent intrusive treachery, 
And let all earne-t youth kiiit heart and brain 
For Gixl and Freedom till the Foe is slain. 
Lastly this letter tVom that General 
Of freedom's friends the first and last of all ; 
'* Davis, our banner guards both white and 
black. 
For each then that you slay or fetter back 
To bondage, worse a thousand fold than death, 
Yours man for man, shall answer with a breath. 
And God shall put u;:on your guilty head 
The dreadful burden of the blood thus shed. 



45 



Again you say the white men we employ 
To arm the blacks your vengeance shall destroy. 
You've pondered on this folly long enough, 
And now I say to you, retract this stuff, 
Or every rebel officer and wretch 
Claiming a slave that I hereafter catch, 
Shall hang. So Providence designs to prick 
Its sleeping friends and rouse them to tlie quick. 

Who fights for freedom in the truest sense. 
Is he who fights in. his own self-defence, 
A cause that man whose name yo%b falsely bear 
Great Jefferson so greatly could declare — 
"No attribute of God can countervail. 
And who fights freedom doth God's throne as- 
sail," 
But you, forsooth, you fight for '' freedom," too ? 
Oh yes, to bind four millions in a slough 
Of degradation — liberty to part 
Parent and child, and break a mother's henrt, 
To steal her sweat and lash it to make more, 
Yes, liberty to use her for a whore — 
And, damnedest crime before or since the flood, 
l!^ext barter from the block your flesh and 

blood — 
ifsTay, liberty to take your bastard's life 
Without white testimony to your knife. 



46 



Siicli libei-ty, the libLMty of Ilell, 

The first Great Traitor foug'lit for — and he fell ! 

1 have the honor, sir, with such intent 

To sign myself yonr most obedient.'' 

Like Luther's " kan nieht ancle r " to tlieSee 
Such words are mightier than victory. 
God help him, and God help the world to aid 
Tiie last " Mayflower" seed from Upas shade. 

Wliere strife began, and where the tempest 
rose. 
Here at the last its wild career will close, 
Bi'inging a time when this bright land shall be 
The lasting summer liome of liberty, 
Where beauty, never beauty without soul, 
The gayest blossom without odor-dole^ 
The Rose of Beaufort shall wear double spell. 
And freedom's fragance sweet about it dwell, 
And L'»ve and Beauty so united be, 
Twice beautiful and \oYQ\y— Liberty ! 



47 



IX 



Wlien " Hilton Head " was cleft from Pinck- 
ney's Isle, 
Making tlie severed ^' Head " a skull to style, 
^he stream that severed it thereby became 
" Skull Creek," and still to-day retains the 

name — 
Across which and above yon rocky shoal — 
You see it wliere the billows whiter roll — 
Once stood a stately mansion, wreathed around 
With laurel, oak, magnolia, blossom-ci'owned, 
Orange, palmetto, cedar, '' sailing pine," 
Afar reflected m the conscious brine, 
While rose and lily and a thousand blooms 
Of rare and tropic birth distilled perfumes, 
And fairer still this fair-girt home within. 
Teeming Avith every delight to win 
To ease and art — rare pictures, books and more, 
The secrets of tlie laboratory's store, 
Wliere Alchemy could chase the wizard themes 
Of her alembic and alcanor dreams — 
Lo ! here a hero of our Nation's first 



48 



Great Revolution vividly rehearsed 
Such thrilling tales as one alone could tell 
Who had himself his stories shared so well — 
A war for Freedom — reckless all the while 
About him reeked a bondage twice as vile ! 

'Twas night — September — when an awful gale, 
Such as is wont these regions to assail, 
With hiss and crash, and wild tornado-rush 
Of God's breath, gorged Avith a sea-drunken 

gush 
Of sky, blind-staggering midst shrieking spoom. 
Whelms garden, grove, and mansion in a doom 
Of deluge, swallowing tlie very ground 
Beneath tli^m — nothino- in the mornino^ found 
Of all that ravishment of luxury 
But a wild revehy of mocking sea. 

Proud Soutln-ou, thus was all thy glory vain 
Only to dignify a prophet's strain — 
Shall man vaunt liberty to wield the rod,. 
Blaspheme the image and the soul of God ? 
Behold he answers, wild tornados strew 
The sea with wrecks — '^ His whirlwinds answer 
iTo /" 

But reckless even yet behold a blast 
Of wilder wrath over the wa^etch has past. 
And one day as I rode, what should I find 



49 



But this old father and his son stone blind, 
Tattered and lean, and with a broken will 
Too weak for labor grinding at the mill. 
" Who loves thee ?" " I^o one,'' answering for- 
lorn, 
" I'm good for nothing but to grind the corn." 
Charles Cotesw^orth Pinckney, Heaven be thy 

Judge, 
These thine own victims bore to thee no grudge, 
Yet thou hadst robbed them, mocking liberty — 
From Ahrahavvs losom now they pity thee ! 



X. 



MiTCHEL, I may not look upon thy light, 
Mine is no camera thy ray to unite. 
Doubly devoted, who could doubt the love 
That called thee from thy converse there above 
To stifle in this atmosphere of earth, 
Empjn-ean inclining to our dearth ? 
The stars of God are thine, how couldst thou then 
Be thought to emulate the stars of men ? 



50 



lN"ay, tlioii thyself our gift to glorify, 
On tri vailing our generosity, 
Quick at thy country's peril, noble heart, 
In freedom's sky to take a higher part, 
Behold, thy fame shall "bum forever bright 
In two skies, earth's and liberty's, the light 
Of one, indeed, scroll-like to roll away, 
The other brighter to the Golden Day, 
But when ad astra man his best had given, 
Lo, God set thee 'mong stars of heaven 
And behold where the bright lustre paled. 
Behold the spot where MitcJiel's soul exhaled, 
Wafted aloft upon the grateful prayers 
Of poor men sweeter tlian Elysian airs. 
Wise soul and kind, a genius full of love, 
The "genius loci" of his birth above. 
His liberty, with justly-balanced mind. 
But slavery till shared by all mankind, 
Enrolled among the noble table round 
Of our great Honest Arthur, truth-renowned, 
Atilt against old prejudice in mail 
He rode to ransom Freedom's Holy Grail. 
Let yonder village still repeat his name, 
Who dared too, to be just to humbler claim 
Of higher law than custom's " simple fee," 
Just to the Equity of Equity. 



51 



How could'st thou die ! yet not for tliee I weep. 
But for mv country, that it could not keep 
The star of Mitcliel for a guiding light, 
Through its long black and disappointful night. 



XI 



What more ? the Mecca of the artist found. 
Behold at last the Soldiers' Burying Ground. 
How thick tliey lie ! O thus must fields be sown. 
With rich seeds of the Mayflower tempest-blo^vri ? 
Has Heaven ordained the choicest seed to die— 
The mortal to don immortality ; 
The carnal to enricli thus first decay 
To breed a new and nobler from the clay. 
And so forever blood of martyrs be 
The only seed of blissful Liberty ? 
Hail to the mystery of Bethlehem, 
Tlie Red Cross of the ITew Jerusalem ! 



The Eed Cross, the Red Cross, spectre of flame. 
Flash over the people a ghost of their shame ! 



52 



Ye seeds of the blood that once weltered your 

manor 
With- martyr-stams still fresh on time's proud- 
est banner, 
By shuddering Lemur of Lexington, 
By Bunker Hill's deathlessly pealing gun , 
By barefooted-bloody tracked Yalley Forge, 
By gibbering graves in the mountain gorge, 
By horns of the altar that sacredly looms 
To king-hunted peoples from patriot tombs. 
By liberty's passion and liberty's prayer, 
By hope, and the holier rite of despair. 
By guerdon of triumph, the guidon of time. 
Up, rescue the prize of the past, from a crime 
That seeks to betray your Excalibur brand 
From Liberty's office to Slavery's hand, 
Till Liberty's day-star, once Morn's beacon- 
light. 
Like Lucifer sink to an omen of night. 
The Red Cross, the Red Cross, spectre, in 

flame. 
My people to vengeance, the vengeance of 

shame ! 
Be this still the prayer of the patriot chief, 
The glory of God, whatever man's grief ; 



53 



And breatlie over camp, over court, and keep 

pure 
The warrior from luit and the statesman from 

lure. 
Great God! bj the sweat of Getliseniane's 

pang, 
The shriek of the wrong that from Calvary 

rang. 
The Red Cross, the Red Cross, that rapturous 

sign 
That ever humanitj^'s throe is divine, 
From patriot eepulclires Freedom must rise. 
Redeemer of J^ations and Guide to the Skies ! 



Down with the wretch who cries that Washington 

Is dead, who will not see great Jefferson 

Still loom sublime upon the deck of state, 

By self-denial daring to be great ! 

1^0, they are dead whose souls no longer thrill 

To tlie grand impulse of that God-like will, 

Who, battle-scarred and stained with bloody 

sweat, 
A halo of proud tears about him set. 
When fondly palpitating gratitude 
Prayed yet the boon to crown that loftihood 



54 



With angel-inspiration blest that crown 
By giving back to each who gave, his own ! 
Aye, king of kings be he who taught his kind 
The noblest empire is the self-ruled mind. 
And, that divinest truth till then unknown, 
Tiiat Love is king, and Honor is his throne, — 
Who carved the lines for 'New Jerusalem, 
Each tower a temple and each stone a gem ! 
O, noblest polity since time began, 
Christ to the State, Immanuel to man, 
Messiah-Union, God be still thy Guide, 
And every martyred angel on thy side. 
Thou caiist not die, for lorn can never die^ 
Blood of oior God^ lodij of Liherty ! 



XII. 

PANTOGRAPH Y. 

A Land of great first principles, a Goal 

Where Nature's laws are on their grandest 

scale. 
Twin mountain dykes defend one mighty vale. 



55 



Veined over with the vastest floods that roll 
Into the teeming tropic from the pole, 

Debris of ploughshare and of golden schale. 
And where the educated past repairs, 

From every tongue and people, sphere and 
clime,. 
To wed the future and beget the heirs 

Of all the glory of the coming time. 

That proudly lifts its portico sublime. 
The royal destiny of him who dares 
Be true to God and serve Him in affairs ! 



filjj ©alt. 



Magnificent tree, 

Over inountaiii and sea, 
Sole monarch, the forests of each thy dominion, 

Those that wave their tops 

With a fondage of ropes, 
And those, whose proud spars stem the coast Car- 
olinian. 



Let the tempest rave, 
Thou art mighty to save, 

Tlie trepidant voyager trusting to thee. 
And bending thine arm. 
Dost buo}^ from harm, 

Him breasting the billowy, bellowing sea. 



57 



Thou bindest the shores 

Of the Hyperbores 
To the radient zone of the teeming Equator, 

And like an Afrite 

Of the Arabian Night, 
Bestridest the hurricane over the water. 



O magical tree, 

There's no winter for thee, 

Never Boreal Sorcery blistered thy sheen, 
All the weather-cock year 
Thine unchangeable cheer 

Over shadow and shine, grass and glacier, green. 



Representative tree. 

Ever typical be 
Of the soul and the spirit that quickens creation, 

Plant of deity, 

Lone liberty tree, 
Leal Evergreen Oak, live American Nation I 



i E I m e 1 1 . 



Sing to the wide 
Palmetto's pride, 

The boasf of the Southern banner 
Evergreen blade 
Over glebe and glade 

The hope of the sunny manor. 



Proof to the gale 

Is its plaited mail, 
And its sinewy armor under, 

Mightily twist, 

Its fibres to tryst. 
With the shock of the battle's thunder. 



59 



For on a tide^ 
When liberticidej 

The right of the freeman had smitten^ 
Moultrie's grim maw, 
Oped his palmetto jaw, 

And swallowed the bolt of the Briton* 



Then to the blade 
Kever sun or shade, 

Dims sing to the weird magician^ 
Endogen, lone 
Tj^pe of ages gone, 

Elixir- veined J lord patrician. 



Obsolete forms, 
Millennial storms, 

The shades of the Upas shall sever. 
But wave the sheen 
Of tliis Evergreen, 

Trice Ckivaln/s emblem forever ! 



Pai|it0liiu 



Thejre is a blossom in the Southern laud. 
Majestic as the cadence of the Latin. 

Companion of the oak its branches stand, 
And its proud patines the serenest satin. 



A spirit hallowing the amber night, 
And softly answering the summer's kisses. 

Its blossoms, each another satellite, 
lieply to multiply Diana's blisses. 



Sweet orange, white rose, rare camelia, 
And splendid water-lily, all together 



61 

Dissolved in crystal of Castalia, 
And tinct with snow-drops from the yernal 
heather, 



Qnintescent, exquisite Magnolia, 

Sweet heart of sweetness to a brain of splendor 
The glory of bright Flora's milky way, 

Magnihcence deliriously tender, 



Thou art the prototype of a proud time 

That even now mounts stained with blood from 
Edom, 

To crown Earth's bloom with the celestial clime 
Of the millennial Igdrasil of Freedom, 



Mater Kosarum. 

Geay. 

Motlier of Roses, delicate airs delight 
Favonian, nay Venus herself attend 
Thee glowing, choirs of ocean elves and 
Caroly birds celebrate thy beauty. 



Sweet Koses of Beaufort, I pass away. 

But your bloom from my spirit can pass away 
never, 
A boon that is better than laurel bay, 

A love that will live an elixir forever, 
For borne on your pinions a spirit of peace 

Flitted breathing a promise of feverless bowers, 
Where passion and pain find immortal release, 

And the Hose hides no thorn under canker! ess 
flowers. 



Where all is delight, and the orange and vine 
Yie sweetly yet vainly together, where never 

The moons never wane, and the suns ever shine 
Upon verdure an^l blossom and fruitage forever. 



66 



And souls of the past at your magic began 
Over every page of ray volume to hover, 

I listened again to the piping of Pan" 

And the bees again humming in Helicon's clo- 
ver. 



And sages of eld, your transfiguring love 

To my vision revealed in a vista of glory, 
Till fondly to foster the fancies you wove, 

I trusted your sweet Rosicrucian story, 
And slumbering, dreamed that the Hose was a 
Queen, 

And her darling dominion an Isle of Apollo, 
When Dryope leaped from her column of green. 

In your train at the spell of his tortoise to fol- 
low. 



Then roused but to glide into vision again, 
I saw Prospero's Isle and its Spirit of Beauty, 

The angels rewarding whose kindness to men 
Had changed to a Hose, sweetly sealing its 
duty. 



67 



And who will deny tliat tlie Rose is a soul, 
For its purity, grace for its love and its power. 

Commissioned to Earth, sent to tempt to the goal 
And to scatter the desert with heavenly flower ? 



Sweet Roses of Beaufort, the whirUvind of war. 
And tornado of battle now bursting around 

God loving his own sweetly anchors afar, 

Never bolt of the blistering thunder to wound 
you. 

For Heaven avenging the Bowers of Peace, 
From Eden polluting rebellion hath driven. 

And flaming around waves His symbol that frees 
From the Serpent forever the Roses of Heaven ! 



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